Last Day of Summer
by the lights above
Summary: They're too young to be heart-broken. / JamesOC / Subtle T themes.


_My attempt at writing NextGen. JamesOC. Written for the Last Kiss challenge on HPFC._

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><p><strong>I. <strong>He meets her on the beach in a hot summer day, the year Albus graduates from school.

She wears a royal blue swimsuit that fits her curves well, and an over-sized sun hat tipped over her tiny face and a huge, flawless smile on her pink lips. He grins at her, all flashing teeth and roaming eyes, and running his hand quickly to mess up the back of his hair, the way he knows chicks dig, he drawls out a gruff "Hullo."

Her eyes are wide and silver when they meet his and he compares her to a nymph in his head, because she's small and happy and just lovely. The corners of her mouth spread impossibly wider in acknowledgement.

"Hi."

Two letters, a single syllable, uttered by an angel, rolling off a beautiful tongue. He's so caught up in the movements of her face when she talks, that he almost misses out the first ever word she speaks to him.

His name slips through a conversation dominated by Louis, whom he learns that she met at a Muggle bar and recognized from school and got talking to. She offers him hers, when he takes her hand, pulling her with him so she can join the Weasley water-games.

Her name is Tina.

**II. **He learns that she was a Ravenclaw, a year above him when she was at school, and that she had been to detention_ once _for charming Professor Trelawney's crystal balls so they smacked her in the head every time she got near them. He laughs, and wonders if she would laugh when he told them of the pranks he used to pull on people all the time or if she would be disgusted.

She makes him tell, anyway, just by a single silvery gaze that scrapes his heart like broken mirror shards, and it's bleeding all over inside his chest.

**III.** He pulls her away so they can go off for a walk, when Louis stalks away to fetch towels and the other plop down with exhaustion. She giggles against his bare shoulder, and lets his fingers fold over her wrist, keeping up her giggles throughout their walk.

He trades three Knuts for a strawberry ice-cream topped with chopped nuts and chocolate drizzle (her favourite, she says, when he asks) and when she tells him that she'll grow fat, even while licking off a bit of chocolate, he looks into her eyes and tells her that "fat or not, you're beautiful".

In thanks, she offers him a lick of the ice-cream, and when he leans forward to take his reward, their nosetips touch and his lips just slightly brush hers. He thinks she blushes underneath her tan, but he manages to pull on the face he uses with other girls and fights a goofy smile.

**IV. **He sees her again at the Sunday dinner at the Burrow (thank God for Louis and his manners) and he quickly steals her companionship for himself while his cousins goof about their holiday plans. He thinks that he agrees to something ridiculous that Lily asks him but he honestly doesn't care, because he's lost listening to her melodic voice as she recounts her plans for this summer and how her parents want her to move with them to Somewhere Far Off when it ends, and his eyes are caught in the sadness in her silver eyes when she talks about it, and his fingers are suddenly struggling to lift the corners of her lips up because he wants to see her smile.

"What are you doing?" She asks, and he realises that his hand is tight around her chin and that he's practically dangling on her, and he excuses himself and looks away. But then, she laughs a soft dismissive laugh and slim fingers wrap around his under the table.

**V. **They're sitting on the beach again, away from his nosy cousins and her parents who think she's at the theatre with a couple of girlfriends. He drapes a lazy arm on her back and strokes her copper hair away, and he desperately wants to kiss her right now but Albus is looking at them with a smirk on his face and he'd rather not.

She smiles at the devasting look on his face and he's shocked when she leans forward without hesitation and presses her lips to his. He forgets about Albus and anyone else, when his hand slips in to tangle in her hair and the other moves to pull her closer so he can suggest into her ear that they move off public vicinity.

**VI. **They spend the handful of months this way, the early parts of the mornings on the beach, keeping up appearances amongst their families and end up going somewhere in between so they can lose themselves and stop pretending. She'll be dropped off by him or sometimes his cousins wherever she's supposed to meet her parents for lunch and he'll spend the rest of the day locked up in his room or out in the backyard, refusing to join the others in their games, fantasizing about the way her slim fingers feel on his arms when they're with each other, how every time her silver eyes close and open, open and close when she's almost there, how she'll wrap her arms around him when their time is nearly up. During the evening, the others will have lost any sight or scent of him and her parents won't find her in her hotel room if they come looking. They'll meet and he'll spill words of love and tell her how much he's missed her and she'll sigh against his lips and tell him the same.

It's the same every day, and they both hate every moment they're not with each other.

**VII.** The last day of summer, she cries for the first time.

He cries too.

She's leaving him, leaving for Somewhere Far Off, and he'll forever be in pain. She tells him she'll never forget him, she tells him she'll owl him and that they'll find each other again. He nods, and says nothing because there's something humungous stuck in his throat.

The last day of summer, they share a last kiss.

It's sweet and salty, a mix of tears and saliva and lost hope and goodbyes. It's his mouth against hers, hers against his. It's his hands in her hair and on her back, pulling her the closest they can be before they part. It's her fingers clawing at his shoulders, her hand at the back of his head, messing his hair up the way she'd seen it the first day. It's her peach lipstick on his mouth instead of hers when she cries against his chest. It's his musky scent on her face when he grips her hand. It's their goodbye.

It's devasting and it's painful.

They're too young to be heart-broken.

**VIII.** He writes to her every day, loose confessions of how less of a person he's become now. She doesn't.

It's still bleeding all over in his chest.

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><p><em>Review and I'll love you.<em>


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